Multimedia applications executed at computing devices can simultaneously integrate multiple types of content into a single view. To do so, multimedia applications load and render content items, referred to herein as “assets.” Assets can include, but are not limited to, images, videos, audio files, text, and animation files. An example of a multimedia application is a digital magazine application that displays a view corresponding to each page of an issue of a digital magazine. When a user views a page in an article, image files, video files, and text files may be simultaneously rendered in the displayed view.
Simultaneously rendering multiple assets in a view of a multimedia application requires the allocation of computing resources, such as processing time and memory, to load the assets. Allocating computing resources can present challenges, particularly with respect to multimedia applications for mobile devices, such as smart phones or personal digital assistants. Mobile devices loading a mobile version of a multimedia application may have fewer processing and memory resources available to render the assets used in a view as compared to a desktop computer loading the same multimedia application.
One solution for resource-allocation problems is to use clipping algorithms when displaying multimedia assets on a resource-limited platform. Multimedia applications using clipping algorithms may load into memory only those assets or portions of an asset being displayed. For example, if a user of an image editing program has zoomed in to view only the top half of the image, the image editing program can use a clipping algorithm to allocate resources to loading and rendering only the top half of the image rather than allocating resources needed to render the lower half of the image. “Clipping” the lower half of the image thereby conserves resources.
Clipping algorithms can sacrifice responsiveness. For example, the user of digital magazine application may wish to access content included in pages accessible from the currently displayed page. The digital magazine application may conserve resources by only loading and rendering assets used in the currently displayed page and subsequently loading assets used in a second page accessible from the currently displayed page upon receiving a command to display the second page. Consequently, upon selecting the second page, the user must wait for the application to allocate resources for the loading and rendering of the assets used in the selected page view.